An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
